Building the Minimum Viable Product

In the successful build-out of a lean startup, entrepreneur and author Eric Ries suggests adapting the rules of creating the minimum viable product. Rather than getting the product “right”; or employing the “release early, release often” philosophy of soliciting customer feedback for product development, the road to minimum viable product fuses the two ideas. The challenge for the startup is to figure out the smallest amount of product features and capabilities necessary for release, and then to slowly add more functionality as needed. For most entrepreneurs, says Ries, that means that any product will be about one-eigth as robust as they would like it to be. Ship it skinny, and add more features later – if your early adopter customers even notice what they’re doing without.